


Resuscitate

by quassia



Series: Coda [3]
Category: Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Developing Friendships, Disturbing Themes, Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-29
Updated: 2014-09-29
Packaged: 2018-02-19 06:05:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2377553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quassia/pseuds/quassia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before the events of that time, that dark time that hasn't truly ended yet, they were never able to say the most important things. Instead they held them inside, close to their hearts, and found their hearts being gnawed away at. But now, bit by bit, Pekoyama realises that things are changing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Resuscitate

**Author's Note:**

> This is for my friend, who wanted to see more of Peko... and thus inspired this fic.

_Bocchan_.

It would come as no surprise to the others, when Pekoyama finally found the will to tell them, that this was her first thought when consciousness returned. _Bocchan_. Memories swirled around in her head, memories of despair, memories of death, the slaughter, the killing, her young master, her as the tool of destruction, of despair, and then there was an island, there was peace, sun and sand before death started again and a girl with red hair—

“Owari! Hold her for a second—sorry, Koizumi—”

“Aa! Got it! No problem; c’mere, Koizumi!”

“Let me go _let me go let me go LET ME GO LET ME GO LETMEGO_ —”

There was screaming, hysterical, punctuated by laughter that hitched with sobs. Pekoyama opened her eyes and stared upward, at a thin film of blue or silver or _something_ , and a ceiling beyond that, blurred by the cover of _something_ between her and the outside, yes, surely it was the outside. She stared as memories swirled around in her head and felt a great and numbing Despair spreading through her body…

“Peko?”

A face was above her. She blinked and the Despair grew, became its own thing with hands and claws that ripped and gouged at her but she didn’t move still because, naturally, she was a tool and a tool couldn’t move on its own.

“She’s awake— Sonia! Give me some help!” That face turned, that face with an unfamiliar eyepatch marked with a dragon. That face… face face face face—

“Boc…chan.”

Ah, no good. A tool couldn’t talk. She silenced herself, reminded herself that this was her Despair, yes, it was her Despair to be a tool to be used to destroy, a tool that would be wielded by… Wait, no, that was wrong, they should be acting normally, _why did you do that, Peko?_ and she had swung the bat at that person to his incredulous face and open mouth and.

“Peko… Peko!” There was a soft hiss of released air and the film (the cover of the pod) lifted and that face was over her, that one eye bright with hope—hope? Wrong. Her young master was in Despair. Wasn’t he? He should be. “Oi, can you hear me? Hey! Say something, okay?”

“Hinata, I need some help, ow—!”

“Sorry, Owari, just a… is she fine, Kuzuryuu?! Do you need us?”

“I don’t know,” Kuzuryuu said and turned his head to speak to the others in this room. That’s right. The Kuzuryuu family. This was her young master, her wielder, he who had wielded her well in bringing his despair. “She isn’t moving yet. Hey, Peko… hey…? You can hear me, right?”

Everything… was wrong.  


* * *

  
She was told an unbelievable story as she sat, still and silent in her chair, filled with Despair. She was told about an island, a virtual world, a simulation that she had been in and _hell, it’s a miracle you woke up, Pekoyama_. She said nothing because she was a tool and she couldn’t possibly say something and, meanwhile, her young master sat close and wrung his hands and his one-eyed gaze darted about nervously and anxiously.

When they told her about her execution, she blinked. She didn’t react. She didn’t feel anything. She couldn’t. Because that was the right of a person, not the right of something like her.

“You protected me, so I didn’t end up dying in that place,” Kuzuryuu said with a shaking voice, his eye full of tears, holding all the emotion in him that Pekoyama seemed unable to properly convey. She didn’t even speak, react beyond that blank staring. “You… protected me. Sorry. Peko. I didn’t… protect you at all, all I did was get in the way and nearly got myself killed… ah, well, put into a coma, but it’s the same thing… I really was useless.”

_Protected?_

“…Kuzuryuu,” Souda muttered quietly as Kuzuryuu shook, wondering why the hell she wasn’t replying properly even though he _knew_. One of his hands raised up to his face and he shook his head, trying to silence the others, waving away the hands that wanted to help him because he wasn’t the one who needed that right now. No, he didn’t need the help.

For each of them, it was different. For each of them, the despair acted in different ways. This silence, this non-responsiveness, this acting like… not a person was… Pekoyama’s Despair. _How ironic,_ someone would have laughed and spun, delighted in Despair and Despairing in delight, _that the very thing she claimed she was all along drove her into Despair! Upupupu!_

“Can you hear me, Peko?”

_Bocchan._

“What…do I do…? This isn’t…”  


* * *

  
Her name was Koizumi Mahiru, and Pekoyama had killed her.

“It was all my fault,” Kuzuryuu muttered. “If I hadn’t done those things… damn it… She was right all along. She told me, you know? Revenge and whatever wasn’t something I had the right to do. Judgement. Yeah, she was right.  Who the hell was I? I didn’t deserve to, not after everything I did, and yet I thought I could, ‘cause she helped with covering up what happened to my sister. Even if that happened to be true, I didn’t…”

He balled his fists on his knees and hunched his shoulders. They sat alone with each other. The room was quiet, because only Kuzuryuu was talking—it was a special ward they had set up, for those of their friends too in despair, to keep them here and tend to them, slowly bring them back to themselves. They’d realised after the first few who had awoken and the mayhem that had accompanied their awakening that this sort of thing was necessary, as much as they all hated it.

After all, it felt like an asylum.

That said, Sonia had decorated the rooms. The others had helped. So there were colourful splashes of paint, rough paintings made by amateurs desperate to bring some life to these rooms they would contain their friends. There were decorations and otherwise, though hospital equipment too if any of them ever stopped eating and needed to be kept alive like that. Kuzuryuu had brought a screen, an old-fashioned Japanese style decorated with falling cherry blossoms, and decorations to liven up Pekoyama’s room. Once, she had caught herself reaching for the screen, to touch its material before stopping herself.

“I can’t even properly apologise to her yet. She doesn’t remember—no, she does, a little. She talked to me the other day, you know? She called me a bastard.” Kuzuryuu laughed, but there was some glint of light in his eye, something pleased. “She asked me who the hell I thought I was… it felt good, to have her mad at me. I felt like I saw her properly for a second. She hates my guts, she’s got to hate me, but that’s better than despair.”

He stopped and looked to Pekoyama, watching him. He watched her blink.

“Do you want to meet her sometime, Peko…? I think… mm. When she comes back to herself more… let’s apologise. The both of us.”

He extended a hand to her and held her arm gently, but she didn’t respond, not audibly. Inside of her head, there was a thought of _ah, it’s warm_ that didn’t fit a tool.

 

* * *

  
“You ate.”

Kuzuryuu looked delighted as he surveyed the empty plate. Pekoyama blinked, her usual reply. He looked back up at her after studying the plate some more, and moved to take his usual seat. He sat with a casual posture, leaned back on the small couch in the room, as though he had no care in the world, as though here was perfectly safe. Just the two of them.

“Was it good? That Souda doesn’t make bad food. Hinata, either—probably ‘cause he’s got so many talents, that damn genius.” He clucked his tongue affectionately. “When Hanamura is doing better… we’re thinking about letting him back in the kitchen. Cooking is something he loved, y’know? It’ll be good if he can do it again, if that can pull him out some more from despair…”

Pekoyama twitched and she sucked in a sudden, sharp breath. Kuzuryuu was instantly sitting upright, posture tight and his eyes wide and fixed on her.

“P—Peko?”

“Bocchan,” her voice was ripped from her, raw from ages of not talking. “that— _woman_.”

“Woman?” Kuzuryuu was breathing fast, his expression swimming with confusion. And then, then it fell into place and he shuddered. “She’s not… she’s not here anymore, Peko! We killed her—we killed her AI, at least, and _she_ died ages ago. We saw it, you know?” The broadcasts of that first mutual killing that were shown to everyone, with the intention of driving them into despair. However, all people saw was the victory of hope. “We beat her!”

“She’s… not here.”

Kuzuryuu clenched his hands harder.

“Peko… don’t talk about her. She doesn’t matter to us anymore, got it? This is our story. We’re going to go toward the future, okay? She doesn’t have anything to do with it anymore, we’ve got our own choices, we can do whatever it is we want to do together—”

“A tool can’t… do what it wants,” Pekoyama said and felt Despair as she saw Kuzuryuu’s expression crumple.

 

* * *

  
“Today’s an outing!” Souda yelled and thrust his fists toward the sky. “Get pumped, got it?! We’re gonna have fun today, all of you. That means no bad stuff allowed; we’re havin’ _fun_ and only _fun_.” He walked backward ahead of them, leading, surveying the group. And a miserable lot they looked. He glowered at them all, at Kuzuryuu and Pekoyama, Tanaka and Hanamura, all listless. “Oi, why the hell are you lookin’ like that too, Kuzuryuu?! What did I just say!”

“Shut up,” Kuzuryuu groaned. “Like we could all get up at shitty o’clock and be energetic like _you_ , bastard.”

“Ain’t my fault you stay up all hours of the night doin’ _weird stuff_!”

“The hell you say to me?!”

But their bickering only slightly filled up the awkward quiet. All three of the others had not recovered, though bit by bit memories had come back to them. Tanaka’s hand would lift to his scarf on occasion, searching out hamsters that weren’t there, and Hanamura’s eyes would have some life come back into them sometime and he’d try a lewd comment with a smile or his accent would slip through. Pekoyama… was still quiet, but bit by bit…

“All this said, though… why is it this combination?” Souda muttered. “More’n that, why’m I in charge of Tanaka again…?”

Tanaka stirred.

“Do you have some complaint, mortal?” he asked imperiously. “Not as though the Ascendant of Ice needs any human to watch over him! But to be given such an honour… fuwahahahaha! Be grateful I have allowed you such a duty and decided to spare your feeble life!”

“The hell,” Souda said flatly, but for a moment a relieved tone entered his voice.

“ _Anyway_ ,” Kuzuryuu cut in when it became apparent Souda and Tanaka were revving up for a good bit of bickering, “c’mon. We’re going to the farm today. Eh, well, we’re calling it a farm but it’s way different than your usual farm.”

“Different?” Pekoyama asked after a moment. Talking was still something that came slowly, slowly but surely.

“Aa.” He brightened. “Maybe you’ll like it, Peko. Tanaka, too. And Hanamura—none of the animals there are for cooking, though, got it?”

“Kuzuryuu-kun!” Hanamura looked vaguely offended. “I only use the finest _ingredients_ as a _chef_ , and of course I’d never do something so barbaric as hunting them myself—”

Kuzuryuu just rolled his eye, moving to lead the way, grabbing hold of Souda’s sleeve when the mechanic seemed intent on keeping his argument going. As he walked, however, he glanced back at the three who quieted, though Tanaka would occasionally mutter and touch his scarf restlessly or Hanamura would pat his pockets and Souda would recall the episode a few weeks earlier and how he had swung his knife.

Pekoyama was quiet as usual, though that changed (in expression, at least) as they arrived at the farm.

Well, not a farm so much as pseudo-nature reserve. If there had been a farm there before on the real island, it had collapsed, and the building in question was home to all kinds of wild animals now that the walls had been knocked down but its frame left intact. Most numerous in this area were the birds, perched on high beams and on the archway that let them into the little area. The fence a little ways away had slumped over (not even a fence anymore), and a few mules browsed and nosed at grass while coming and going as they pleased.

They heard Tanaka snort before he stormed ahead of them, toward that collapsed building, to which something had snagged his interest, likely its inhabitants. Hanamura clicked his tongue in amazement before scampering behind (and Souda threw Kuzuryuu and Pekoyama a quick, worried glance before following his charges).

“…d’you like it?” Kuzuryuu asked awkwardly as Pekoyama approached the little pseudo fenced-in area.

“Like?” she echoed. Like. “…they’re fluffy.”

She referred to, not far away, a few cats who languished in the grass.

“Ah, those guys?” Kuzuryuu walked up to her side, eager to tell her about them. “Apparently, when this place used to be a resort, some people left their cats here. They had a bunch of kittens… Actually, you can see them roaming around all over the island and there seems like there’s always more of them. Want to get a closer look?” He looked so bright, so eager in a way Pekoyama had never known from the past, and hopped easily over the fallen fence. She followed.

He knelt, clucking his tongue softly in invitation, and one of the cats sniffed at him skeptically while a tinier one, kittenish, bounded over toward the offered fingers, eager for a treat. It found none… but it found his fingers and pawed at them as he laughed before scooping up the cat easily with a hand, wriggling the fingers of the other to entertain it.

“Here, Peko,” he urged, approaching her.

She looked at the cat, squirming happily in Kuzuryuu’s hold… and her expression softened… and a weird smile rose onto her face. Kuzuryuu stared… but then he too smiled, and it was a grin, a big one. Mind, that cat flinched and mewed nervously when Pekoyama reached for it, but one way or another she got to squeeze the cute little pads at the bottom of its fuzzy, fluffy foot…

 

* * *

  
Time had passed, slow, slow, and Pekoyama found herself not in the safe rooms any longer, but back in a cottage with an open window, filled with sunlight and warmth. This too was decorated, and she found the case of her sword nearby, though the bamboo sword itself was absent. “Don’t worry, I’m keeping it safe,” Kuzuryuu had told her.

Her young master… had changed

As she let herself start to think and as memories came back to her, she thought so all the more. The Kuzuryuu who lived on these islands wasn’t the same as the Kuzuryuu she had grown up with. He was more open, he was more concerned, he let himself be close to others, he bickered and argued with Souda and others but at the same time he helped them. Helped the others, helped them, helped Pekoyama, earnestly, kindly, the kindness she had always known he’d carried.

“I’ve been burdening you, bocchan,” she said aloud to the empty room and felt self-conscious to hear her words come back at her. Her words and thoughts. “I’ve burdened you… very much.” She remembered dying, still felt phantom pangs now and again, though she bore no scars from it.

“Pekoyama-san?”

The monitor had blipped to life and Pekoyama looked at the girl on it. “Nanami.”

She got a sleepy smile. “I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. But I heard what you said… and I don’t think that’s right.”

Pekoyama blinked. “You don’t… However… no matter which way you look at it, it is the case. Because he was trying to protect me as well, Fuyuhiko-bocchan… even outside of that program, his eye no longer works, and that is my fault.”

“Mm-mm.” Nanami shook her head. “I don’t think that’s right. That was something Kuzuryuu-kun wanted to do, right? That he got mixed up in everything and wound up hurt… was Enoshima’s fault to begin with. Not Pekoyama-san’s. Because of that, though… he changed a lot. _That_ was because of Pekoyama-san and how you protected him, how important you are to him.”

“Protected,” Pekoyama echoed and her smile was small and bitter, “after what I’ve done in the past, something like me can no long protect anyone…”

“Protected,” Nanami repeated, more firmly this time. “At that time… Pekoyama-san protected him with everything. I think that’s amazing. Your past is only one part of you… you know? Because hard things happen to you, you can move forward… like Hinata-kun and the others. They use it as their reason to keep going. Kuzuryuu-kun does the same… I think.”

Pekoyama sighed. “What an uncertain-sounding statement,” she murmured as one hand raised to her chest, pressing over it, over her heart, where it beat. Where it shouldn’t beat, all things considered. Nanami just tilted her head, puzzled.

“Is that so…? Mm, it’s what I actually think, though…”

 

* * *

  
Today was a terrible day.

She could barely function, could barely will her limbs to walk, her legs to move, so consumed by _it_. She shouldn’t be walking, she shouldn’t be looking, thinking, speaking, what did she think she was doing such a thing all of this time? Aah—this Despair…

“Peko? What’s up? You’ve been quiet for a while.”

Kuzuryuu turned from where he was walking ahead of her, his hand on his hip, his head cocked lightly. He frowned when no immediate reply came, as Pekoyama struggled greatly with something unseen before she finally forced her mouth to open, her jaws, her tongue to move, to form words with which she could appease him.

“I’m… fine. Do not worry, bocchan.”

Kuzuryuu watched her, for a long moment. He looked at her eyes. Pekoyama wondered, for a moment, why the five of those who had been there when she’d awoken often did that. They would often look at each other’s eyes, or at the eyes of those still struggling, especially at certain points… Apparently, though, Kuzuryuu saw something that displeased him, for his expression hardened.

“You’re lying… Oi, Peko, tell me the truth. What is it? Are you having a hard time right now?” He twisted properly in order to face her, setting his legs apart slightly, and his posture was tense and almost defensive, like he was preparing to face down something.

“I’m fine, bocchan.” A tool had to be fine. A tool was never anything but fine, unless it was broken or rusted and then needed to be thrown away and aaah, would that inevitably happen to her? That kind of—

“Am I that unreliable?!”

Pekoyama blinked, brought back simply by the sheer surprise, the unexpectedness of the statement. She looked, really _looked_ at Kuzuryuu, at his face flushed with anger and his eye bright with unshed tears. What…was this?

“Don’t you know that even I feel it too?!” Kuzuryuu burst out, his hands clenched, his knuckles a blanching white. “Don’t you think that I—such fucked up things—sometimes, I start thinking ‘ah, yeah, I bet if I killed everyone now after they’ve seen me change so much, that’d really make them despair’. What the hell’s with that?! Even though I know what it is, and that it isn’t _me_ , I really start feeling that I should, just so I can feel despair!”

“B—Bocchan.”

“But that’s why I tell them!” Kuzuryuu swung his hand out to the side. “I tell every one of them when I’m starting to get like that! ‘Cause I’m weak, but I know that nothing will come of holding it in! It’s because of that—because we were all alone, because we held things in—that things became this bad to begin with! If I someday try to go after any of them, I want them to be prepared for it, I want them to stop me and to bring me back ‘cause I can’t do it on just my own!”

Pekoyama was vaguely aware that she was shaking, slightly, a shaking through her whole body like two somethings were twisting inside of her, and neither could decide on which was going to control her.

“So rely on me already, Peko! I want you to rely on me! I said I wanted you at my side, didn’t I?! It doesn’t just mean coming with me and looking after me or _whatever_ , it means that we rely on each other, and when things get hard, we tell each other! Even if I can’t do anything… at least I can listen to you!” That eye really was bright, really shone with those tears and Pekoyama was struck by it, by how mature, by how much Kuzuryuu had _grown_.

She didn’t think of tools, of despair, of Enoshima, of anything but this strange and budding feeling, warm and comfortable.

_Ah, that’s right. This is…_

“When you’re in despair… don’t fight it by yourself…” Kuzuryuu lifted one of his hands and roughly scrubbed it against his face, cursing as he smeared away tears.

“I apologise, bocchan,” Pekoyama said quietly and he looked up to see her smile, faint and wry but soft, very soft. Her eyes were bright and clear. “I thought that I, who had been the perpetrator… the one behind why you were so injured, and why you lost your eye… that kind of me didn’t have the right to burden you with more than I already have. But I was mistaken. Therefore, I apologise.

“—so please, do not cry.”

Kuzuryuu flinched minutely as her hand fell on his head, gently stroking his hair.

“Don’t tr… don’t treat me like a kid,” he sulked and reached up one of his hands to bat away hers. He heard her laugh and felt relief, true relief, like he had finally broken through properly for a moment and here, _here_ was the Pekoyama he had been waiting for, the girl whose friendship and company was all he’d ever wanted for such a long time, but he was unable to say it.

 

* * *

  
“Ah… Peko-chan.”

Koizumi is sitting just where she said she would when Pekoyama had contacted her, asking her if they couldn’t meet for a few minutes. Pekoyama suggested a more crowded place, in the dining hall perhaps, somewhere where Koizumi would feel more comfortable with a person who had once been her murderer, but Koizumi had refused, the characters in her letter somehow more jagged and emphasised around that part, as though annoyed Pekoyama offered such a thing.

So, here they are now—that beach, that beach house, like something out of a dream.

Or a nightmare.

“Koizumi,” Pekoyama greets her tentatively, cautiously, watching the girl. Koizumi is pale and drawn like many of them, but her eyes are sharp and almost defiant, an expression that Pekoyama is sure that Kuzuryuu appreciates when he speaks with her. “I— Hm? Is that your camera?”

Distracted from her utmost purpose, Pekoyama’s eyes settle on the camera around Koizumi’s neck. She blinks and looks down at it, reaching a hand up to cup at it gently.

“This? It’s just a cheap camera that Souda fixed up for me… it works well enough. But I couldn’t use my other camera.” She clucks her tongue quietly. “You know, Peko-chan, it was full of pictures. Pictures from _that_ time. I wonder if I took them for that damn girl? I think I remember doing something like that, taking pictures, spreading them so that everyone could see… So, I got rid of it. I couldn’t use such a dirty camera, even if I have to settle for this half-rate model.”

The way she strokes her fingers over it is fond, though, terribly fond, and Pekoyama wonders if she’s already taken pictures of them all.

“But you didn’t call me here to talk to me about my camera, did you?” Koizumi rises from her sitting position on one of the benches on the beach, her shoes grinding against the sand underneath her. She props one of her hands on her hips in a familiar gesture and gestures impatiently with her other one.

“I came to apologise,” Pekoyama says tightly and moves to stand in front of her. She’s never done this. She’s never apologised to one of her victims—naturally, that had never been a necessity. The dead stayed dead. Koizumi and the others, all of them had defied that death, what should have been death. So… she lowers her head now, closing her eyes as she bows deeply to the girl standing opposite her.

“…”

“I regret it, very much,” she says, quietly, taking a deep breath as she hears only the waves and Koizumi’s silence. “There are few things that could possibly atone for what I did to you, however, if there is anything that I—”

“Look up, Peko-chan?”

The question comes in such a kind tone of voice that Pekoyama is shocked, lifting her head—to the click of a camera. Her mouth opens in surprise as Koizumi turns the device around to see how her shot came out.

“There it is—that’s a really surprised face.” Koizumi is smiling as she turns the camera toward Pekoyama, who wonders at seeing such an expression on herself. “Though next time, I’d like to get one of those nice smiles of yours instead, Peko-chan.”

“Koi…zumi?” Her voice feels as though it’s grating on her teeth as she gets it out.

“You know,” Koizumi starts with a sigh as though she’s dealing with a difficult child, “when I woke up, I couldn’t feel anything besides… well, you know too, don’t you. Kuzuryuu kept coming to see me, though, and if I’m being honest… it’s partially thanks to him that I’m like this again. He just sat there and let me say whatever I wanted to him, and I really was furious, I think, in-between all of the despair. Eventually, I think that fury overwhelmed even my despair.” She clicks her tongue. “Can you believe it? That guy saved me. Honestly. What a ridiculous thing.”

Pekoyama doesn’t answer, staring, caught up in uncertainty and a simple disbelief and utterly confused about how to deal with this situation. Koizumi isn’t finished, though, thankfully, and she goes on after a moment to gently turn off her camera.

“I’m not going to say _thank you_ to him, of course. But that gratitude is how I really feel.” Koizumi looks at Pekoyama, a soft glance from behind red hair. “I don’t feel angry over those things anymore. So it’s all right, Peko-chan. I’ll forgive you.”

How strange, Pekoyama thinks as her shoulders fall, she never felt any kind of relief like this from words said by someone besides Kuzuryuu…

“But!”

Pekoyama stiffens, not quailing under Koizumi’s gaze but certainly shifting from foot to foot. “What… is it?”

“Don’t ever do something like that again, got it?” Koizumi says severely, her eyes narrowing. Her knuckles rest against her hips and her shoulders are hunched up like a bristling cat. “If you start thinking about doing something like that, then I…” She trails off, but after a moment to gather her own courage she finishes, “…I’ll stop you. So come to me.”

 _“I want you to rely on me!”_ is what Kuzuryuu had shouted at her, so desperately.

Some part of Pekoyama thinks that she shouldn’t, that a tool doesn’t have that right, or better yet she should smash down that offer and go against Koizumi’s expectations and strike her down right here. That part grows stronger and a dark thing wakes up, something that opens its slavering jaws and it laughs and twists puppet strings around its claws. One of her hands sways and then she closes her eyes and opens her mouth.

“…please, stop me.”

As darkness eats her up, she hears Koizumi’s voice like a sword cutting through the shadows: “Naturally.”


End file.
